What makes Parkland so competitive?
Parkland is unique in that it has a very large full time faculty and a multiple-site structure. We have a great combination of experienced, well published faculty and young up-and-coming faculty. We operate out of 6 hospitals, 3 of which are level 1 trauma centers. The scope of the program is incredibly broad and well suited for either academics or private practice.
The medical school is one of the top biomedical science institutions in the world and is highly ranked, whatever that's worth, and also very inexpensive. We have access to several excellent research opportunities and a great amount of faculty support for scholarly work.
Parkland's OMFS program is also storied, with
literally dozens of OMFS program directors and chairs, past and present, who trained here. One of the modern "fathers" or oral surgery, R.V. Walker is still active with the program, and during his reign Parkland attained (and has since maintained) it's reputation as an OMFS
mecca.
So there's a few reasons. I could come up with more if you need.
Have you noticed a difference in the level of preparation of your co-residents by their respective dental schools?
First of all, my coresidents are the
creme de la creme, another benefit of being at Parkland, knowing that you're working with the best. Anyway, I haven't noticed much of a difference at all other than very minor differences in things like terminology or certain emphases: for example, my DS emphasized radiographic oral path while someone else's emphasized clinical oral path.
Even if there was a gross difference in clinical skills between us, I wouldn't attribute it to the education first, there's a lot of personal variation that I feel would be a lot more likely to account for it. Basically, there are crappy dentists who graduate from every school.
